“The experience of death is going to get more and more painful, contrary to what many people believe. The forthcoming euthanasia will make it more rather than less painful because it will put the emphasis on personal decision in a way which was blissfully alien to the whole problem of dying in former times. It will make death even more subjectively intolerable, for people will feel responsible for their own deaths and morally obligated to rid their relatives of their unwanted presence. Euthanasia will further intensify all the problems its advocates think it will solve.”
.. More and more, it seems to me, modern individualism assumes the form of a desperate denial of the fact that, through mimetic desire, each of us seeks to impose his will upon his fellow man, whom he professes to love but more often despises.”
― René Girard, The One by Whom Scandal Comes.. “To escape responsibility for violence we imagine it is enough to pledge never to be the first to do violence. But no one ever sees himself as casting the first stone. Even the most violent persons believe that they are always reacting to a violence committed in the first instance by someone else.”
― René Girard, The One by Whom Scandal Comes
Rene Girard’s Theory of Violence, Religion and the Scapegoat
In this way, Girard takes issue with the dominant conflict models that focus on aggression or scarcity as the sources of conflict. Such models propose that “many of our problems are the direct result of concentration of wealth and power” as well as “exploitation and colonialism” (Farley, p. 17-18). While this perspective goes a long way in explaining various types of conflict that societies experience, Girard believes they are insufficient to explain the diversity of situations around which we find conflict. He believes that these insufficiencies are avoided when conflict is, instead, modeled on acquisitive mimesis, or “appropriative mimicry” (Girard 1979, 10). He sees aggression as part of the problem of conflict, not part of the cause.
.. Hegel’s idea that desire desires the desire of the other. For Girard, however, desire is imitative and acquisitive: it does not desire the desire of the other as such but imitates the other’s desire for an object.
.. Their desires intensify because desire is mimetic
.. As our two actors increase their efforts to get the grant, they begin to focus on each other and their focus is shifted away from the grant itself. This becomes an “internally mediated” event, because Sylvester is now hiding the true focus of his desires–to beat Dr. Arnold.
.. They both become the model and obstacle for the other person and their desire is no longer simply for the object, but for the prestige of winning over the other person. The situation has now progressed into “conflictual mimesis”, since they are no longer focused on acquiring the grant but on competing with each other.
.. The subject is torn between two opposite feelings toward his model–the most submissive reverence and the most intense malice. This is the passion we call hatred.
.. Only someone who prevents us from satisfying a desire which he himself has inspired in us is truly an object of hatred. The person who hates first hates himself for the secret admiration concealed by his hatred
.. Dr. Arnold, Dr. Arnold sees Sylvester as becoming an equal, who now is transformed into a rival, as well as a double of himself. Both are struggling with the internal conflict of loving and hating the other. This dissonance they also want to dissolve, which they believe they can ameliorate by eliminating the other. Both Sylvester and Dr. Arnold are now contemplating the destruction of their doubles, thus at the same time, the destruction of themselves. Once the level of conflictual mimesis or internal mediation, is reached, because of the process just described, violence may erupt between model and rival. However, because they are “mutually intimidated and identical”, they rediscover the object of their original desire and “deflect their destructive energy from one another onto a substitute”
.. Normally they are an outsider, but on the border of the community, not fully alien to the community. This victim belongs to the community, but has traits that separate him/her from the community. Several common victims are elucidated by Shea, summarizing Girard’s list in The Scapegoat (1986): children, old people, those with physical abnormalities, women, members of ethnic or racial minorities, the poor, and ‘`those whose natural endowments (beauty, intelligence, charm) or status (wealth, position) mark them as exceptional”
.. But these classes aren’t arbitrarily chosen as victims simply because they stand out and are vulnerable. They are chosen to be the victims of persecution “because they bear the signs of victims”
.. Just as the Disciples asked of Jesus in John 9 regarding the man born blind, “Why was this man born blind? Was it a result of his own sins or those of his parents?” (The Book paraphrase), history is filled with communities who accuse the sick, gifted, disabled, etc, of being the propagators of evil (Alison 2001, 3-15).
.. The process, however, isn’t orderly and logical, as the sacrificers believe. While they believe the victim is obviously the cause of social disorder and their course of action unquestionable, their determination of the victim is, as described above, arbitrary. However, as the first sacrificers begin the process, mimesis spreads rapidly through the community and coherence is achieved (again, in a manner unspecified by Girard).
.. For example, Girard describes the process by which Jews were blamed for the presence of bubonic plague in many medieval cities who subsequently massacred their Jewish populations based on those beliefs (Girard 1986, 1-5). Girard also describes the commonality of various witch trials, also in the medieval cities, where women were blamed for ills in the community and executed as witches (7-9).
.. Girard notes that those individuals who did break from popular opinion, whether heroes or rogues, tended to be the victims of scapegoating if social problems arose within a community that forced the scapegoating mechanism to become activated
.. Girard describes, at a behavioral level, what he has discerned as patterns in history, mythology and classical works: when communities face great stressors, they have the potential to collaborate as if having one mind, in believing that one individual or group of people are the cause of their problems. Despite having no rational evidence of guilt the community frequently proceeds to victimize the individual or group as scapegoats. Arendt, and the theories of group psychology provide a mechanism for the behavior that Girard describes.
.. Third, the victim often does not disagree with the charges laid against him/her, and the scapegoaters themselves believe the charges. Part of the nature of the scapegoating mechanism is that, not only do the scapegoaters not know that they are scapegoating, but often the scapegoat believes the charges to be true. For example, during the medieval witch trials, “the accused may well believe herself to be a witch, and may well have tried to harm her neighbors by magical proceedings
.. The compelling element to Girard’s theory is that, as he presents his survey of the data, this process can be observed throughout history in the world’s great literature, in mythology and in history itself. When violence escalates in a community, if there is a ritual sacrifice of an innocent victim, the violence in the community immediately ceases.
..Paradoxically, this victim is often deified. Not only was the victim the cause of the violence, but, since this victim was sacrificed, s/he also becomes the salvation of the community, since sacrificing the victim becomes the method of ending the violence. So the victim is surrogate because s/he was sacrificed instead of the entire community being sacrificed.
.. But as culture progressed, and specifically with the introduction of the Jewish religion into the world’s culture, symbols–animal sacrifices and sacred rituals–were used in place of human sacrifices. Thus Girard claims the origin of religion is rooted in violence.
.. Girard’s unique perspective as a post-structuralist who affirms religion, despite its violent and deceptive ontology, separates him from many of the other analysts of religion from the earlier 1900’s.
.. Opposing substitutionary atonement theories of Jewish sacrifice as well as Jesus’ death, Girard proposes the idea that sacrifice was never meant to atone, to reconcile humans with God. Rather, he claims that sacrifice was always part of the human attempt to eliminate violence. Jesus’ death wasn’t a sacrificial atonement, but God revealing once and for all the fallacy of the GMSM and revealing to us the roots of human violence and the ultimate failure of all of our methods, specifically the GMSM to eradicate that violence
.. As the theory predicted, now that the JCS has exposed the mechanism and society is seeing GMSM for what it is, there remains no way to prevent the violence that GMSM for centuries had prevented (Bailie 1995). Some writers, like Bater have picked up on an apocalypticism in Girard’s writings and feel he may believe that there is no alternative to this cycle than the complete mutual destruction of humanity (Wallace 1994, 287-304)
.. Rather than imitating our neighbors and falling into the trap of desiring what they desire, we should imitate Christ, who imitates God.
.. One of the criticisms lodged against Girard’s work is that he is simply a Christian apologist trying to give the Christian texts credibility to the academy and to evangelize in the name of Christ. While he has stated as much in interviews (Williams 1996, 286-288), that doesn’t mean that Girard’s work must necessarily be interpreted using his own hermeneutic and agenda (Mack 1985, 160).
.. Further, Girard himself does not espouse a particular brand of Christianity that must be used as an hermeneutical framework through which to see his theory. In fact, Girard seems to radically overturn traditional ideas about the meaning of Christ’s death on the cross, by rejecting the idea of an atoning blood sacrifice as the reason for Christ’s crucifixion. Girard redefines Christ’s death as a self-sacrifice by Jesus to allow the world to see the scapegoating mechanism as a futile effort to end violence. This, in opposition to the contemporary view of the crucifixion as a necessary requirement of a wrathful God who must have a blood sacrifice to avenge God’s justice and goodness. In this way Girard’s reinterpretation represents a contribution to the socially rejuvenating path out of substitutionary atonement theory.[4]
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: René Girard
3. The Scapegoat Mechanism
Whereas the philosophers of the 18th century would have agreed that communal violence comes to an end due to a social contract, Girard believes that, paradoxically, the problem of violence is frequently solved with a lesser dose of violence. When mimetic rivalries accumulate, tensions grow ever greater. But, that tension eventually reaches a paroxysm. When violence is at the point of threatening the existence of the community, very frequently a bizarre psychosocial mechanism arises: communal violence is all of the sudden projected upon a single individual. Thus, people that were formerly struggling, now unite efforts against someone chosen as a scapegoat. Former enemies now become friends, as they communally participate in the execution of violence against a specified enemy.
.. However, Girard considers it crucial that this process be unconscious in order to work. The victim must never be recognized as an innocent scapegoat (indeed, Girard considers that, prior to the rise of Christianity, ‘innocent scapegoat’ was virtually an oxymoron
.. the community deceives itself into believing that the victim is the culprit of the communal crisis, and that the elimination of the victim will eventually restore peace.
.. a. The Origins of Culture
Girard believes that the scapegoat mechanism is the very foundation of cultural life. Natural man became civilized, not through some sort of rational deliberation embodied in a social contract, (as it was fashionable to think among 18th century philosophers) but rather, through the repetition of the scapegoat mechanism. And, very much as many philosophers of the 18th Century believed that their descriptions of the natural state were in fact historical, Girard believes that, indeed, Paleolithic men continually used the scapegoat mechanism, and it was precisely this feature what allowed them to lay the foundations of culture and civilization.
.. Hominids could eventually develop their main cultural traits due to the efficiency of the scapegoat mechanism. The murder of a victim brought forth communal peace, and this peace promoted the flourishing of the most basic cultural institutions.
.. Freud is right in pointing out that indeed, culture is founded upon a murder. But, this murder is not due to the oedipal themes Freud was so fond of.
.. Nevertheless, human communities need to periodically recourse to the scapegoating mechanism in order to maintain social peace.
.. At first, while living, victims are considered to be monstrous transgressors that deserve to be punished. But, once they die, they bring peace to the community. Then, they are not monsters any longer, but rather gods. Girard highlights that, in most primitive societies, there is a deep ambivalence towards deities: they hold high virtues, but they are also capable of performing some very monstrous deeds. That is how, according to Girard, primitive gods are sanctified victims.
.. In fact, Girard considers that hunting and the domestication of animals arose out of the need to continually reenact the original murder with substitute animal victims.
.. The victim’s perspective will never be incorporated into the myth, precisely because this would spoil the psychological effect of the scapegoating mechanism.
.. later versions will tend to dissimulate the scapegoating violence (for example, instead of presenting a victim who dies by drowning, the myth will just claim that the victim went to live to the bottom of the sea), in order to avoid feeling compassion for the victim.
..But, Girard insists, all myths are founded upon violence, and if no violence is found in a myth, it must be because the community made it disappear.
.. Girard thinks that modern societies have the equivalent of myths: persecution texts. Especially during the witch-hunts and persecution of Jews during the Middle Ages
.. Girard also considers that prior to the scapegoating mechanism, communities go through a process he calls a ‘crisis of differences’. Mimetic desire eventually makes every member resemble each other, and this lack of differentiation generates chaos. Traditionally, this indifferentiation is represented through various symbols typically associated with chaos and disorder (plagues, monstrous animals, and so forth). The death of the scapegoat mechanism restores order and, by extension, differentiation.
.. whereas myths are caught under the dynamics of the scapegoat mechanism by telling the foundational stories from the perspective of the scapegoaters, the Bible contains plenty of stories that tell the story from the perspective of the victims.
.. Thus, Girard recapitulates the old Christian apologetic tradition of insisting upon the Bible’s singularity. But, instead of making emphasis on the Bible’s popularity, or fulfillment of prophecies, or consistency, Girard thinks the Bible is unique in its defense of victims.
.. For example, Girard contrasts the story of Cain and Abel with the myth of Remus and Romulus. In both stories, there is rivalry between the brothers. In both stories, there is a murder. But, in the Roman myth, Romulus is justified in killing Remus, as the latter transgressed the territorial limits they had earlier agreed upon. In the Biblical story, Cain is never justified in killing Abel. And, indeed, the blood of Abel is evoked as the blood of the innocent victims that have been murdered throughout history, and that God will vindicate.
.. The prophets promote a new concept of the divinity: God is no longer pleased with ritual violence. This is evocative of Hosea’s plea from God: “I want mercy, not sacrifices”.
.. However, ironically, Girard seeks help from a powerful opponent of Christianity: Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche criticized Christianity for its ‘slave morality’; that is, its tendency to side with the weak. Nietzsche recognized that, above other religions, Christianity promoted mercy as a virtue. Nietzsche interpreted this as a corruption of the human vital spirit, and advocated a return to the pre-Christian values of power and strength.
Girard is, of course, opposed to the Nietzschean disdain for mercy and antipathy towards the weak and victims. But, Girard considers Nietzsche a genius, inasmuch as the German philosopher saw what, according to Girard, most people (including the majority of Christians) fail to see: Christianity is unique in its defense of victims. Thus, in a sense, Girard claims that his Christian apologetics is for the most part a reversal of Nietzsche: they both agree that Christianity is singular, but whereas Nietzsche believed this singularity corrupted humanity, Girard believes this singularity is the manifestation of a power that reverses the violent foundations of culture.
.. According to Girard, Jesus brings a sword, not in the sense that he himself is going to execute violence, but in the sense that, through his work and the influence of the Bible, humanity will not have the traditional violent means to put an end to violence. The inefficacy of the scapegoat mechanism will bring even more violence.
.. Thus, Girard believes that, ironically, Christianity has brought about even more violence.
..Girard believes that, 20th and 21st centuries are more than ever an apocalyptic age. And, once again, he acknowledges a 19th century German figure as a precursor of these views: Carl von Clausewitz. According to Girard, the great Prussian war strategist realized that modern war would no longer be an honorable enterprise, but rather, a brutal activity that has the potential to destroy all of humanity.
.. humanity has not found an efficient way to put an end to violence, and unless the Christian message of repentance and withdrawal from violence is assumed, we are headed towards doomsday; not a Final Judgment brought forth by a punishing God, but rather, a doomsday brought about by our own human violence.
.. the Holy Spirit in Girard’s interpretation is the reverse of Satan. Again, Girard recurs to etymology: the Paraclete etymologically refers to the spirit of defense. Thus, Satan accuses victims, and the Paraclete mercifully defends victims. Thus, the Holy Spirit is understood by Girard as the overturning of the old scapegoating practices.
.. Under Girard’s interpretation, there is a twofold sense of original sin: 1) human beings are born with the propensity to imitate each other and, eventually, be led to violence; 2) human culture was laid upon the foundations of violence.
Girard vs Genesis
Girard’s theory of violence focuses on our desire to receive: I resent a rival because he wants the same thing I do, and he may get it. Violence arises from resentments about not-getting. Halbertal argues that “exclusion from the possibility of giving is a deeper source of violence than the deprivation that results from not getting.” Violence expresses the frustrated worthlessness felt by someone who doesn’t measure up, who cannot contribute.
.. Halbertal’s conclusions will appall Girardians, who will charge that he perpetuates rather than exposes mythic scapegoating. That charge is tricky because its target is ultimately bigger than Halbertal. Halbertal is Jewish, and his theory of sacrifice is rooted in exegesis. Thus the Girardian rejection of Halbertal raises questions about the Girardian evaluation of the Hebrew Scriptures: Do Genesis and Leviticus perpetuate mythology?